It’s 2:20am and I am awake and jet lagged and anxious about finding a new job and a new home and answering people’s questions that I find mundane and uninspiring.

It’s been 36 hours since my flight from Tokyo eased into a dreary SFO runway.

It’s been 361 days since I left California to live and travel in Mexico, France, Italy, Greece, England, Scotland, Morocco, and Japan.

Transitions can be hard. That’s why people pay me $150/hour to partner with them through changes in their lives as a life transitions and mental fitness coach. Tonight, and for the next few months, I need a coach. Because this return to America after a year away is not unfolding as the silver lining-ed one I was trying to convince myself it could be. It’ll be great to spend time with family again! To hug my nephews and nieces and participate in their growing up! I’ll have friends again! I get to speak English all the time! I’m just grateful I was able to make the last year of adventure happen!

These positives are true and good and worthwhile. But they aren’t taking away the ugh, back to this shit feelings I’m having. The ones that are keeping me up after 90 minutes of sleep.

And when I say shit, I mean the tiresome process of getting a full time job in corporate America while knowing full well that so much of corporate America drains my soul and doesn’t care about me as much as I care about it (if I am measuring my care in losing sleep over something/someone).

When I say shit, I mean getting insurance and finding a doctor and making appointments that are months away only to have those doctor’s offices reschedule them without warning for another few months down the road.

When I say shit, I mean accepting that my new budget for rent will just have to be almost double what it was before I left.

When I say shit, I mean the Bay Area conversations that default to IPOs and housing prices and WFH policies and childcare challenges.

When I say shit, I mean the absolute doom and gloom of Trump round 2 and the feeling like one shouldn’t feel or experience daily joys when it feels like our society is burning.

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My reactions to these ugh, back to this shit feelings start with trying to focus on the good things and keep my perspective. To remind myself of the wealth of perspective I gained about my life by being away for a year, etc. etc etc. But, then, I quickly spiral and start scheming on how to burn it all down. I flirt with throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And sometimes, I think that’s a good thing.

Sometimes, getting close to walking away from the circumstances I have put myself in helps me take a step in the direction I want to go. It was this attitude that led me to publicly launch my coaching business in 2023 after getting hit with waves of angst and mild depression after my honeymoon. It’s what is leading me to write right now (after spending a few hours scrolling on Instagram and applying to jobs).

And when I switched over from Instagram and LinkedIn to my “Substack Writing” Google Doc, actually writing sounded hard. So, I started by organizing said Google Doc - to move some of the ideas, titles, and paragraphs I’ve written in my “Brainstorming” section down to my “Archive” section. Some notes were over a year old, so if I hadn’t written more on them yet, then I probably never would, I thought.

But there sat a paragraph I remember writing on my Notes app one morning well over a year ago before I left California as I sat on my couch a few pages into a new book:

I hate starting a new book. I want to skip the part where I’m getting introduced to the characters and the plot. I want to just be in it. Be in that delicious place of being fully wrapped up in the tale and the people. To know the background already. To have the context that makes the flowery, descriptive sentences have meaning. To make them more than just lines to make it through before arriving at understanding.

I’ve been trying to think about my return to California as another “long stay” in our adventure (this is how we referred to the homes we made for 3 months a piece in Mexico City, Paris, and Bologna). I’ve told myself that it’s another chapter in a life that can be a fulfilling and inspiring adventure no matter where I am or what I’m doing. But it’s feeling like a new book rather than just a new chapter. And remembering that I’ve already acknowledged that I hate starting new books is a welcome wake up from my current spirals.

Of course it’s hard to get amped up reading job listings and company descriptions.

Of course it’s difficult to see a home when clicking through staged apartments on Zillow.

Of course it can be clunky to connect with friends and family when you have so much to catch up on before the deep, personal questions and divulgences ooze forward.

I’m missing the context that makes all the flowery, descriptive sentences of my life in California have meaning. Right now, things are reading like lines on a page or boxes to check off. It takes time to build and weave and intertwine these lines, to turn a life into the delicious tale that makes you want to keep reading. I’m working on it.